


Something Grey, Something Blue

by matrixrefugee



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-27 13:27:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18195200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matrixrefugee/pseuds/matrixrefugee
Summary: River wants to nick Jack's coat. Her plot works a little too well...





	Something Grey, Something Blue

**Author's Note:**

> Written for < lj user="love_bingo">'s "lover's quarrel". River Song/Jack Harkness, and arguably River Song/Jack's Greatcoat (I'm open and affirming toward Cargo Ships; and as the happy owner of a replica of Jack's Greatcoat, I can see why so many people are gaa-gaa over it). Also, the planet Jansenia is inspired by a similarly named imaginary kingdom invented by a seventeenth-century French Catholic satirist who was zinging the Jansenist heretics. Slight warning for weird use religious themes and torturous penitential devices.

"You're sure you wouldn't let me borrow it?" River asked, admiring Jack's greatcoat as it lay over the back of a chair in their hotel room.

Jack glanced over his shoulder as he finished buttoning his trousers. "Sorry, love, but no. Can't be begged for, stolen, or loaned out."

River sat up and reached over the footboard to drape her arms over his shoulders. "Not even if I had a job on Earth, 1940s?"

He put his hands on her arms, squeezing her gently. "Sorry, but you'd stick out like a sore thumb. A beautiful woman in a man's military coat? An intriguing peculiarity, but a suspicious one, for that time and place."

"You've gotten hard," she said, with a teasing pout.

"Been working out more," he said, with a grin.

She baffed his arm and let him go. "Liar. I didn't mean that kind of hard." But that "begged for, stolen, or loaned out" had given her an idea, an idea that started to crystallize as she watched him take up his coat and slip it on.

He turned and slipped an arm about her. "Same hotel, same time, different room?" he asked.

"Different room, same time, same hotel," she said, leaning up to kiss him.

* * *

The next time that they met -- in the room below the previous room, moments after River first tried to borrow Jack's coat -- she waited till Jack lay in a post-coital snooze before she made her move. Gliding out of the bed, she went to the dresser where he had deposited his wrist strap vortex manipulator and set to work adjusting the settings on it. He had keyed the device to his DNA, but he could be more specific as to how he had defined that key.

She had finally gotten the parameters just right and was setting the device back on the dresser, when she heard Jack stir on the pillows. "Hoo... woman, you wear me out," he murmured, contented.

She returned to the bed and slid back in next to him, keeping an air of nonchalance. "And here I was going to ask for a second round," she wheedled.

"Wish I could, but duty calls: gotta see a man about a dog on Jansenia," he said, sitting up and reaching for his trousers.

She arched both eyebrows at him. "Jansenia? That horrid place? They hose you down with holy water, if they suspect you've so much as kissed your sweetheart, and you smell of a lot more than kisses, sweetie," she purred, eyes dancing. Oh, this could hardly be better.

Once dressed -- greatcoat and all -- Jack leaned over her. "Want me to bring back some of the locals' penitential devices?" he offered.

She gave him a look of mock horror. "Are you suggesting either of us needs penitentializing?"

He chuckled, with a wicked grin. "Silence, evil jade," he snarled. "No, seriously, what's a better use for 'em than some hijinks between two -- or more -- adults with a real love for the frisky flesh."

"I can't think of a better or more inspired idea," River said, reaching over to slap Jack's rump. "Go forth and preach the good word."

 

He reached for the wriststrap and buckled it on. "I'll be back before the couple above us can be done with their dance," he promised, keying a few buttons.

A blue aura enclosed his form; a moment before he snapped out of sight, Jack widened his eyes with shock.

Jack vanished, but his clothes stayed behind; they hung in the air for a moment as the chronon energy lingered. Then they collapsed in a heap on the floor.

River hopped up from the bed and reached down to scoop up Jack's coat, shaking it to free it from the rest of the clothes. "All mine," she murmured, stroking the nap of the lapels, then she slipped into it, straightening the folds about her shoulders. She strode the length of the room, admiring the heft and swagger of it, before she sallied forth from the room.

* * * *

She managed to elude Jack for a several months standard, the greatcoat still on her back. Whilst she was sitting in a cafe on a rock off Arcuturus (or Shi'noop, as the locals called it), waiting for a contact, when a tall figure in a monk's robe with a black hood lowered to hide the figure's face entered. "Repent, ye sinners! Repent, for your judge awaits you beyond the gates of death!" the figure boomed. Some of the cafe patrons stared as the figure roamed between the tables, others cringed, some burst into tears while others laughed or just ignored the interloper. River only smirked at it: she recognized the figure's gait.

The monk approached River's table, pointing a finger at her. "You, jade, come forth and repent," he ordered, lifting his head enough that she could see under his hood. Jack peered out from under the folds of black wool, glaring at her, then mouthing. 'you. me. need to talk. outside.'

She rose, lifting her hands and letting tears slide down her cheeks. "I repent: I am a heinous sinner, but my days of crimes are over."

"God be praised," the phony monk said, putting a hand on her shoulder and steering her out into the alley behind the cafe.

Once there, Jack flipped his hood back. "Glad to see you took care of my coat, while I was stuck on Jansenia for six months," he snarled.

She looked down at the woolen folds. "Fits me well, doesn't it?" she asked.

"Yeah, after you stole it: nice touch, keying my vortex manipulator so I teleported *naked*. Onto a planet where people take ion baths to get clean so they don't have to take their clothes off," he snapped.

"You wouldn't let me borrow it when I asked for it," she said, with a pout.

"I didn't trust you with it!" he snarled. "And this is why!"

"I took good care of it, didn't I?" she said, reaching out to stroke his cheek.

He pulled away, then he dropped his gaze with a sigh. "Sorry, they tried to brainwash me: still trying to get over that."

"You poor thing: did they take away your equipment?" she asked, serious now.

"May as well have," he said, lifting his robe, showing her the complicated and torturous looking device strapped about his hips, imprisoning the little captain and his two lieutenants, and no doubt imprisoning the little captain's sister, hidden away behind them.

"They really worked you over: so much for repurposing their penitential devices," she said.

"Yeah, now can you get me out of this thing? You can have the damn coat if you can unlock this without making me sing soprano for the rest of my life," he said.

"Back to our usual time and place?" she offered.

"Anywhere but there: just get this off me," he snapped.

"All right: I've a hotel room a few squares from here," she said. "But perhaps we can leave the robe on? I've always wanted to roleplay deflowering a Jansenian monk."

"Woman, you're impossible," he snarled, but the glint in his eyes said he felt open to the scenario.

"Mmmm, and quarrels or no, you love me for it," she said, slipping his arm through hers and leading him to her hotel room...


End file.
